Performance Making Project led by Mary Pearson

This two-week intensive will result in the creation and performance of a collaborative group piece at Ponderosa Tanzland 2012.

This is for anyone who enjoys or wants to learn about ‘devising’ original performance, through joining in my current research.

I am wrestling with the notion of FAILURE as part of a movement-based research for a new solo performance. I’m interested in cracking open the concept of failure and challenging normative belief systems to uncover what lies underneath.

Begun this February 2012 at Earthdance (USA), the project will continue in Liverpool (UK) in Spring 2012 and again during P.O.R.C.H. in JULY 2012, where I will lead this group collaboration and show a next version of the solo.

The process will be rooted in the performance body, inviting personalities and humanity to show up there. We will investigate, deconstruct & re-construct personal and societal definitions of success and failure, beauty, art, performance, value.

My performance aesthetic uses generous playfulness and absurd humour with an ironic edge. I enjoy creating abundant personae and tipping the balance to comic effect. By exposing contradictions, defying expectations, and revealing the ridiculous, even the cliché, we can communicate profound truths with transformative impact.

We will be working with movement as well as words, making images with costume and object, and using recorded music in addition to creating sound.

The processes we will engage in will be drawn from CI/dance/somatic practice, physical theatre, writing, and vocal play. I am also drawing from feminist, cultural, and queer theory.

Expect the fun and ridiculous, the intense and serious, plenty of movement and improvisation, some writing and discussion, cultivating trust for risk-taking, witnessing, provoking and being provoked, discovery and disorientation.

Week 1: Is focused on brainstorming, exploration, generating plenty of new material
Week 2: Is all about shaping a piece, crafting, refining, distilling, rehearsing & performing!